Open-Weight Inference Economics

Open models are beginning to show up in production economics rather than only benchmark comparisons. Vercel AI Gateway data says Kimi K3 and DeepSeek captured a meaningful share of traffic previously going to Anthropic, while new local decision-model runtimes demonstrate millisecond execution without cloud APIs. Together with the prior cost evidence, this moves the line from watch to published: open-weight inference is becoming a procurement and deployment choice with measurable share.

Discussion is beginning to shift from which open model is strongest to the cost and distribution economics of running it. Coverage of open-model balance, inference cost, local compatibility and new open releases points toward a measurable market, but the evidence is not yet broad enough to publish as a standalone line.